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Selected sites
The sites are listed in alphabetical order; a concise presentation underlines their educational content. Sentences in Italic are quotations from the sites themselves.
Mannheim - Heidelberg University Pediatric Surgery (in German) Interactive lessons on Paediatric Urology and Traumatology. Topics covered: Ureteropelvic stenosis, vesicoureteral reflux, Hypospadia, Varicocele, Acute scrotum, Enuresis. The site offers also a superb page of structured links. Multilingual glossary of medical terms
OMIM - Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man
Designed at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, USA. The goal of this resource is a concise description of surgical technique: the publication is still being developed, and presently the laparoscopy section is the only active area. A bibliography is included at the end of each chapter . The website of the Department of Paediatric Surgery, lead by Felix Schier, offers in a beautiful gallery of slides a complete paediatric laparoscopy course with topics organised alphabetically from "adrenalectomy" to "varicocele", through "anaesthesia", "trocar insertion", "trouble shooting", etc. Medslide - catalogue of medical slides Based at the Washington Veterans Administration Hospital in Washington, D.C., MedSlides, or Medical Slides, is "…an Internet service providing valuable, up-to-date, easy-to-use medical information in a concise slide presentation format.". Major clinical trials, landmark studies, practice guidelines, continuing medical education topics, lecture slides, and patient information are provided. Among topics of interest for the paediatric surgeon we mention: Principles of wound management, Urolithiasis, Epidural anaesthesia in paediatric surgery, Appendicitis, Resuscitation in the newborn. The site, partly sponsored by the Radiological Society of North America's Research and Education Foundation, is an extremely rich paediatric radiology and paediatric imaging digital library. It features imaging appearances of 402 (!) common paediatric diseases covered by 1.886 cases; needless to say that an huge amount of these cases are of surgical interest. Virtual Children's Hospital Correlapaedia "Correlapaedia", a site developed at University of Iowa College of Medicine, is a correlative encyclopaedia of paediatric imaging, surgery and pathology. Its goal "…is to create for the medical apprentice a collection of patient stories in which imaging and pathology plays a key role in diagnosing and managing surgical diseases in children. By reviewing these stories, it is hoped the medical apprentice will be able to add them to their memory and be able to recall them when needed in the future to aid in their diagnosis and treatment of patients.". 56 clinical stories beautifully illustrated in their imaging, surgical and pathological aspects are organised by age, organ and clinical presentation.
As an exception to the rule of selecting only sites of paediatric surgical interest, we recommend a visit to this journal although (unfortunately ?) no paediatric surgeons are, at least for the moment, among the contributors. The visit is particularly worthwhile in case of depression after an heavy work day or in case of lack of inspiration for further studies. It will be then possible to have details on "The gentle art of political taxidermy", or on "Alteration of the platelet serotonin transporter in romantic love," or else how "carefully collecting, classifying, and contemplating which kinds of containers his patients chose when submitting urine samples". The list of the IgNobel prizes awarded by the Journal boasts gems as "The collapse of toilets in Glasgow Public Health" or "The Relationship Among Height, Penile Length, and Foot Size" as well as "The Effects of Unilateral Forced Nostril Breathing on Cognition" (by the way, all these papers before being awarded the IgNobel prize have actually been published !). European Journal of Pediatric Surgery Full text is available from issue 3/2000. Subscribers of the printed journal can easily register to get free access to the full text online version. Abstracts are available free. Full text is available starting with the September 2000 issue. Tables of contents and abstracts before January 2000 will be added to the site incrementally during the first quarter of 2001. Access to full text is complimentary for a limited period. Abstracts only available for volume 12 (1997); full text available from volume n. 13 onwards (1998) Site promoting free access to medical journals, now totaling over 900 titles subdivided in 96 specialties (Pediatric Surgery unfortunately not among them; Pediatrics 28 journals, Surgery 17 journals). The home page offers good functionality, with the options of viewing journal sites by specialty and by language. It also has a separate listing of journals that are new to the online world.
The site is an award-winning digital library that identifies and organizes high quality, authoritative General Pediatrics WWW sites. Information is available on almost 400 common pediatric problems, some of them of surgical interest, plus policy statements, clinical practice guidelines, consumer health information and more. Martindale's Health Science Guide - 2003 Guide edited by the University of California at Irvine, in a midst of a wealth of medical links (135,500 MedicalCases & Grand Rounds; 62,300 Teaching Files; 1,295 Courses / Textbooks; 1,735 Tutorials; 420 Journals; 4,410 Databases) it is possible to find something interesting under the heading "Pediatrics / Anesthesiology & Surgery Center". Multimedia Medical Reference Library Released in January 1995, the site provides a free resource of medical information with some 18,922 selected medical links, organized in categories: Audio (online heart sounds, lectures, lung rales...), Clinical Trials, Journals, Medical Equipment Auctions, Medical Reference Library, Diseases, syndromes and treatments, Medical Schools of the World, Medical Services, Medical Software, Medical Student Study Center, Other Web Medical Indices, Products, Professional Organizations. Scope of this site is to match "…investigators with studies. Investigators can find studies which suit them and sponsors have immediate access to suitable investigators. Investigators can apply immediately for a study reducing the time taken for sponsors and doctors to get in touch. Investigators are alerted to new studies in their therapeutic areas allowing sponsors to target investigators specifically for their study". Very rich site, with some aspects relevant for paediatric surgeons, presenting news, clinical cases, Congress Resource Center, presentation of new drugs, online medical dictionary, multilingual medical glossary. The system contains the electronic form of eight glossaries, in which are discussed 1830 technical and popular medical terms (with cross-references between them) in eight languages : English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Danish. Swiss based non-profit private Foundation aimed to "…promote the effective and reliable use of the new technologies for telemedicine in healthcare around the world." HON is now presented as "…one of most respected not-for-profit portals to medical information on the Internet " featuring, among other items, two widely-used medical search tools, MedHunt© and HONselect© and the HON Code of Conduct for the provision of authoritative, trustworthy Web-based medical information. The search for "Paediatric Surgery" made through these tools retrieves 27 paediatric surgical sites subscribing to the HONcode, 145 sites visited and described by HON and 1456 sites and pages automatically retrieved by a robot. The sites retrieved by the system are really many, but unfortunately not always completely focused on the request, having sometime only a very slight pertinence with paediatric surgery. General search engine with some sections of interest for paediatric surgeons. Noteworthy the nutritional section, presenting a detailed database on the infants different foods. Updated world Congresses and Conferences program. Worth of a visit the "Humour" section, displaying jokes with medical flavour. Sites Médicaux dans le Monde Classement par Spécialités
The scope of this section is to offer Paediatric Surgeons who surf the Web an edited guide, a bulletin describing how to find information and data, with particular attention given to sites of educational value, aiming to compile an index of paediatric surgical information, a sort of a virtual textbook of Paediatric Surgery. This "data mining" has been carried out selecting among the rather huge amount of sites found only those meeting the following prerequisites: 1) dealing entirely or mostly with paediatric surgical issues (with the exception of specialised medical search engines, of course); 2) having a substantial educational content, either directly or as a structured series of links to other sites of educational relevance; 3) being written by professionals or medical organisations, with a sound scientific background to the content; 4) having an access free or through a free on-line subscription (with the exception of the on-line journals); 5) not being overtly promotional. Do you have a site fulfilling these criteria to suggest to be inserted in the list ? Please contact us !
This page represents an attempt to put the available paediatric surgery related internet sites in an order so that the interested paediatric surgeon can screen the information according to its relevance for our subject. This is strictly to separate from peering these sites. However one of the subjects that UEMS is dealing with is the education of the interested student, trainee and professional with the ultimate goal of generally approved procedures for re-establishing health. A continuous education of paediatric surgeons abuts on manifold barriers such as heterogeneous, individual educational requirements, geographic obstacles, financial problems, limitation of time, family obligations, carrier commitments etc. Modern information technology with user friendly operating systems offers a promising approach for overcoming these difficulties. In addition the proliferation of personal computers opens an elegant method for an educational network. The number of medical professionals with access to Internet is estimated at about 50% and the access of institutions all over Europe, regardless of geographic position, over 95%. Paediatric Surgeons in different European countries have different demands on the depth and detail of the requested information and specific paediatric surgical training is getting more difficult due to the expansion of medical knowledge. Redundancy of the presented contents and depiction of complex facts by printmedia accelerates this problem. Multimedia technology offers a feasible possibility for making this wealth of knowledge easier to handle and present. These innovative training methods could contribute to a response to major socio-economic challenges facing the European Union by solving educational problems in a European dimension. The quality of life of the Union’s youngest citizens could thus be improved.
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